Letters to the Editor

Joe Schneider writes in his June 9, 1993, Commentary, "Can the
Schoolhouse Handle Systemic Reform?'', that "before we legislate
systemic reform, let's insure that children's opportunity to learn
isn't determined by the physical condition of the schools they
attend.'' This disciple of Jonathan Kozol honestly believes that a
state-of-the-art building coupled with on-site education, health, and
social services (his idea of a holistic education) is systemic
reform.

I have served in schools that had two gymnasiums, an Olympic-sized
swimming pool, auto shops, computers galore, wall-to-wall carpeting,
air conditioning, and every innovation you could think of, yet whose
student achievement was abysmal. There were high dropout rates, low
attendance, large suspension lists, and low standardized-test scores.
Just as clothes do not make the man, the state-of-the-art schoolhouse
does not make the student.

There are many very old, clean, and modest Catholic, public, and
private schools in the inner cities of this nation serving poor and
disadvantaged children well. It is school organization, degree of
responsiveness, professionalism, and commitment that make schools
effective.

If we want real systemic reform, then let us finally adopt the
concept of educational freedom. Let parents become owners of their
schools and watch what happens. Parents will insure that what is needed
is provided.

Clearly, unhealthy or run-down schools should not be tolerated, but
let's not equate traditional reform with systemic reform. Building new
facilities or introducing new curricula or portfolios is only adjusting
the existing system. Giving parents the ability to send their children
to any school would be a sea change in our educational system.

Superintendent of Schools Robert R. Spillane of Fairfax County, Va.,
generally does well in explaining why we need "student achievement
standards,'' why we don't have them, and how to get them (Commentary,
June 6, 1993). Thus, one can overlook his infrequent
self-contradictions, for example, that schools should not "closely
guard local control,'' nor resist "national and state interference,''
while at the same time they "need to be more involved in developing
standards.''

Mr. Spillane fails to be convincing, nonetheless, when contending
that once high academic standards are clearly set and uniformly
enforced students en masse automatically will meet them. In short, he
answers well the easy question, Can standards be raised if teachers are
of a mind to do so?

However, it appears wishful thinking to assume, as he does, that
simply setting high standards will cause instruction to improve so much
that all classes of students suddenly will be able to satisfy them.

Patrick Groff
Professor Emeritus
San Diego State University
San Diego, Calif.

To the Editor:

Two recent contributions to this page, by Gerald S. Coles
("Attention-Deficit Research: 'Leaps of Faith,' Not Logic,'' Letters,
May 19, 1993) and John M. Throne ("A.D.H.D. Is a 'Disorder' Regardless
of Its Origins,'' Letters, June 16, 1993) have combined to provide your
readers with misinformation about attention-deficit disorders.

Professor Coles begins the cacophony of inaccuracy by stating that
A.D.D. is not a disorder at all, simply a "harmful diagnostic and
classification practice'' designed, presumably, to excuse children,
parents, and educators from their failures. He states that "although
many schoolchildren are distracted, etc., whether their behaviors
constitute a 'disorder' remains a conjecture.''

I do not know of any researcher who has studied attention
difficulties, myself included, who would suggest that all children who
are "distracted'' in school have an attention-deficit disorder. To the
contrary, for a child to be diagnosed as having A.D.D., he or she must
display multiple and severe symptoms of inattention and impulsivity
across a variety of settings. Furthermore, a diagnosis of A.D.D.
requires that these symptoms must be evident for at least six months,
and have an onset before age 7. Using these strict criteria, two
decades of research has shown A.D.D. to affect only 3 percent to 5
percent of children under 18 years of age.

Mr. Throne then increases the volume of this cacophony of inaccuracy
by supporting Professor Coles's position that A.D.D. does not have a
neurobiological basis. Both he and Dr. Coles ignore the landmark study
by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health, published in
the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990, that documented the
neurobiological underpinnings of A.D.D. through
positron-emission-tomography, or PET, scanning of the brain.

In that study, researchers used high-resolution PET scanning to
measure regional glucose metabolism in the brains of adults with A.D.D.
(the brain normally derives almost all of its energy from the aerobic
oxidation of glucose). The study confirmed reduced glucose metabolism
in the brains of the adults with A.D.D., as compared with adults
without A.D.D., precisely in those areas of the brain which are known
to be involved in the control of attention, planning, and motor
activity.

While the manifestations of A.D.D. may be grounded in the interplay
between biological and psychosocial variables, the N.I.M.H.
brain-metabolism studies, combined with other data including
family-history studies and drug-response studies, have convinced most
researchers that A.D.D. is a neurobiological disorder. In asserting
otherwise, Dr. Coles and Mr. Throne would have us return to the days
when children with A.D.D. were labeled "stupid,'' "lazy,'' or
"troublemakers,'' instead of receiving the understanding and extra
resources that any child with a disability deserves.

As a long-time admirer of Gerald Bracey and all of his works, I am
pained to have to take issue with him on his latest culinary creation
("Filet of School Reform, Sauce Diable,'' Commentary, June 16,
1993).

Mr. Bracey bemoans what he sees as a "pathology of envy'' among
public school practitioners, a mental condition that prevents them from
being interested in and adopting new ideas that other school people
have invented and are successfully practicing. He cites two
examples--the Key School in Indianapolis and Central Park East
Secondary School in East Harlem.

Having visited both schools and thus both witnessed and been a part
of what I was told was an inundation of visitors, I find it difficult
to consume Mr. Bracey's thesis, even if it were to be sauced with
hollandaise rather than diable.

Even more to the point, however, is the experience we have been
having over the past four or so years at the Clement Gregory McDonough
City Magnet School in Lowell, Mass., the nation's first full-fledged
"micro-society'' school. This school, based upon ideas first put
forward by George H. Richmond, is a school in which our 360 students
from kindergarten through grade 8 design and operate their own
democratic, free-market society in school. They have their own
democratically designed constitution setting up a unicameral
legislature, an elected executive branch, a judicial branch, a
full-fledged economy with its own banks and currency, a large
publishing operation with newspapers, magazines, etc., and a
science/high-tech strand.

Since the school was first featured on PBS's "Learning in America''
series three years ago and subsequently reported on by the
"MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour,'' ABC's "World News Tonight,'' and Time,
hundreds of school people from virtually every state in the union have
either written for descriptive material or traveled to Lowell to
visit--or both. The school has been officially cloned four times with
our assistance--in Pepperell, Mass.; Yonkers, N.Y.; Newburgh, N.Y.; and
New York City's Community School District 1, and other school districts
that have visited are in the process of starting versions. In fact, the
demands on the school staff have been so heavy that we have had to
limit visitors to one visiting day per month and we have had to charge
for informational materials and for visits to help cover costs.

The demand for information and assistance has been such that George
Richmond has founded a national, nonprofit institution called
Micro-Society Inc. to help in both the informational and
staff-development processes. A national workshop is being held this
month in New York City.

All this strongly suggests to me that the problem is not that school
people are consumed and thus immobilized by envy or that they do not
want to learn about the good achievements of others. It is, rather,
that our school systems are by and large carefully designed to make
sure that their principals and teachers do not have the time or the
funding necessary to pursue their strong interest in innovations that
are going on elsewhere.

How many school systems have large budgets available for staff
development in any form, but especially for extensive staff travel, for
substitutes to take the place of the teachers winging around the
country on our rapacious airlines, and then the funding necessary for
curriculum development and the starting of radically different kinds of
schools? Damn few, in my experience.

The funding necessary for this kind of activity is, of course, only
part of the recipe for Julia Child-class radical improvement in our
public schools. Of at least equal importance is a commitment on the
part of central administration and the local school board not simply to
allow but actually to encourage and promote the idea that teachers,
principals--and parents--should be empowered to explore and experiment
and create those radically different and more effective schools.

Without these two necessities--funding and commitment--it will not
make much difference whether our school reform has a diable or
bearnaise sauce on it. It will still be the same old spinach, and we
can all say the hell with it.

I enjoyed Gerald Bracey's metaphorical analysis of the challenges to
school reform, "Filet of School Reform, Sauce Diable.'' I have
personally witnessed what he refers to as "the pathology of envy'' and
it is indeed unfortunate. And, although envy is a valid force, it is
only one of several impeding the progress of school transformation.

In his culinary comparisons, for example, Mr. Bracey overlooked two
compelling factors unique to his business example. First, if a business
fails to remain competitive by ignoring its competitors and its market
or by failing to improve quality, it will go out of business. Public
education is not driven by this kind of competition. For this reason,
schools don't go out of business (though at some point they may).

Second, the chefs in Mr. Bracey's example have more than just a
professional interest in the culinary creations of others; they know
that if they fail to satisfy both owners and customers, they are likely
to lose their positions. Public education is so security-driven these
days that it is actually riskier to try something new than to maintain
the status quo.

Moreover, there exist no widely used assessments in education that
are as authentic as the palates of the discriminating diner. Bottom
line, no one gets fired for failing to do something new and wonderful
just because it would cause education to succeed at higher levels. A
restaurant owner has great flexibility in hiring and firing when the
cuisine fails to satisfy; school administrators do not.

There is, however, one force that transcends all the others. In
fact, all the others are really only its symptoms. This is the vastly
underrated power we find in resistance to change. Most of the change
efforts we see today are slowed or fail altogether not because they
lack merit but because they are overcome by the enormous energy
expended in resisting change. Envy, unfortunately, is just one of the
many ways this resistance manifests itself. Until we move to assist
individuals and organizations to mediate change, the reality of
disseminating the things that work will escape us. Buonappetito (for
those who enjoy Italian metaphors).

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